A Little Rain Never Hurt No One
by ainokitsune
Summary: AU in which John is guilty of more than neglect. Warnings for language, violence, unpleasantness.


Notes:

AU. John is guilty of more than neglect. (Another done-to-death trope. Oh well…)

Title taken from the Tom Waits song, on the album _Bone Machine_. Go and get it. Be in awe.

Warnings for references to child abuse; violence, unhappiness.

* * *

A Little Rain Never Hurt No One

_The world is round  
And so I'll go around  
You must risk something that matters  
__My hands are strong  
I'll take any man here  
If it's worth the going  
__It's worth the ride_  
-Tom Waits

The world went slipping by the window, and when _it_ happened, when the moment of wrongness slid past, Dean saw it. _Felt_ it, like nerve pain bursting down the back of his neck, and in the passenger's seat his brother shifted, and exhaled a long, slow breath into the waiting air. Whisper of fabric, palm ghosting over leather.

"What is it?" Sam asked, head turning, gaze fixed beyond the window, locked on the strange tableau on the grass. Still forms bounded by fences, set back from the road. Small bodies, motionless beneath the threatening sky.

"I don't know." Dean looked again, twisting his head to peer back over his shoulder. Tiny bodies; little children. He'd never been that small. He and Sam—no. Never that small. "I don't know. I've never seen anything…"

"That can't be normal." Sam's twisted more fully, peering through the rear windshield, hands pressing hard on the seat. "Can it?"

"I don't know." He paused. "Never seen anything like it."

"Hm." Sam settled back down, shifted again, legs working, pushing out against the floor, the way they did sometimes. Haphazard and graceless, heels digging into the mat.

"We'll stop by," Dean offered. "On our way back, yeah? Stop by and…"

"Check."

"Check." He nodded. "Yeah. We'll do that."

Another breath, long and slow. And outside, the world slid by. Fences, grass, and three children, two seated, one standing, with their faces bowed to their hands. Dwindling into nothing. In the distance, a white farmhouse sat, pale and stark against deep rolling blue, vivid before the oncoming dark.

"Definitely gonna rain," Sam murmured, and added, "Do you think they'll still be there, when we come back?"

Dean waved a hand vaguely, a kind of non-answer that meant he didn't know, wasn't even going to try to guess. Sam snorted a breath through his nose, then peered up again at the sky.

"Here it comes," he murmured.

The sky opened with a sigh. The first raindrops struck gently, hissing, and the noise melted gradually to a muted, steady drumming. Sam hummed softly and settled back against the seat, eyes shut, and neither of them spoke for the next ten minutes as the rain rose to a muffled roar. There were no other cars on the road, and no lights, and the noise of the rain swallowed up most sounds. Dean squinted into the half-dark, but it was Sam who spotted the entrance to the cemetery, eyes opening suddenly and hand snapping out to slap his brother in the arm, and point sharply to the left, at the stone arch and iron fence stabbing fifteen feet into the air.

The cemetery was full of angels. Dean made a face. There were things with wings scattered all over the place, and marks on the headstones, gouged into the soil, the trees, scrawled over the names of the dead. Edges of light, sparking on the stone. Sam pressed his lips together.

"Jesus, I knew it would be bad, but… This is just…_man_, even for witchcraft, this is weird. It's like the words're…on _fire_."

Dean hunched his shoulders against the rain and rummaged around in the trunk for the supplies. He cast the signs on the nearest tombstone a cursory glance, then shook his head.

"Let's just get this done." Sam caught his shovel on the toss and they went to work, layers of clothes quickly soaked in the chilly downpour, while they hunted for the grave at the center of the secret markings. Digging up the soaking ground made for backbreaking labor, and words were the first casualty of the sudden pressing need to preserve as much oxygen as possible as they worked at the witch's grave.

"Hungry in the dark," Sam murmured, once, glancing briefly at a lighted stone, statue of a child like quartz sparking in the sun. Dean snorted, and tipped heavy clumps of mud onto the glistening grass. Someone had hung chimes in a tree away toward the road, and the persistent, distant ringing melted into the rush of the rain, the sound of Sam's breathing, and of his own.

"Make it hot, or it won't take," Sam instructed, after they'd clambered out and stood above the black gaping hole. He handed off the lighter fluid and Dean wrinkled his nose as the stink of it saturated the air. On the ground lay the shovels, and Sam hauled his rifle to brace hard against his shoulder. "We're about to have company."

"We'd _better_," Dean muttered, soaking bones liberally, shoulder blades itching beneath the stone gaze of the angel behind him. "All that work—and this place—"

Sam nodded. "S'creepy."

"_Extra._ I mean _Jesus_…"

The ghost tore shrieking out of the fractured light. Dean cursed at the hissing downpour, matches flaring and dying, and his brother took a wide stance.

"Dean!" An explosion to the left, and ringing burst suddenly in his ear, muffling the noise of the rain. Bite of gunpowder, sharpness of salt.

"Shit." He shielded the matches with a hand, hissed at the burning. "Shit!" And damn it all to hell, anyway. Bitter cold and dark. _This is war_. Fell to his knees and hurled the flaming missile down. The light flashed on the sides of the pit as it fell, like searchlights skimming the clouds.

Fire ripped out of the ground, claws of light tearing at the rain, the damp soil, the grass. Chemical stink, and dust, and old wood and poison. Dean stumbled back and caught the edge of the ghost in the corner of his eye, incandescent, searing away.

All the lights went out. A huge hand closed iron-hard on his arm and hauled him up. He grabbed at Sam's face, neck, shoulders. Held still and trembling while the same checks were performed on him, and then stepped away from his brother.

"Bleagh." Sam shook himself, dog-like, whole-body tremor sending raindrops flying from damp overlong hair. And again. Nervous habit. Swapping out rifle and lighter fluid for shovels, they got back to the most anticlimactic part of the job. Dean had calluses on his calluses.

"Swear to God," he told Sam in a tone that brooked no argument. "Gloves. Leather or something. Sick of this shit."

"Too delicate for this work? Old age catching up?" Sam grinned at him, flash of white in the dark, rain pouring down his arms and over his hands. Shining in a different light now, the yellow-white of civilization. Ducked sharply when Dean flung a handful of scorched earth at him, and snapped, "Man, quit screwing around! I wanna finish before we freakin' drown out here!"

Dean smeared a filthy hand over his face. He was coated in grave dirt and water and sweat. Not that it mattered—wasn't much real difference between grave dirt and regular dirt. Was no place on earth something hadn't died. Faintly, he smelled rotting leaves. He blinked water out of his eyes, and shook his head.

"'Bout halfway," he guessed, shielding his eyes, peering down.

"All right," Sam glanced up at the sky, then back down at the ground. "All right."

* * *

The farmhouse crouched on the horizon, distant behind the grasses now beaten down in the rain. Naked and dust-white, it showed clearly even in the dark, though Dean couldn't see any source of illumination. The sky pushed down on the building; steady, inexorable, without malice.

"They're gone," Dean observed, tapping the wheel.

"It _is_ four thirty in the morning," Sam observed mildly.

"Yeah, but…" That was assuming the children were real, and had really been there. That they had a home to go back to, that now they were tucked up safe in bed, away from the storm…

"Okay," Sam was idly picking at the dirt under his nails, but his voice carried an edge of curiosity, "Okay, but…what do we know about the area?"

"Other than the job?"

"That job. Yeah."

"So…we'll go back."

"Look it over."

"Good. And."

"Shower."

"_Christ_ yeah."

The whole car smelled of rain, and smoke, stifling everything else. The smell of the dark; more than just rain. Wildness, the very edge of the world. The fine fine line between living and…not. The finest line of all.

"Rain tomorrow?" he asked his brother. Sam ran a hand idly over the window, streaking the faint sheen of condensation there.

"Dunno."

* * *

Not rain. Something else. Cold tightening, rushing out of the sky in clear wide streams.

"Oh," said Sam, leaning out of the door, wind pushing his hair back, daylight painting his skin chill-white and muted yellow. "Oh."

"S'Too damn early for snow! It was hot last—four, five days ago!"

"Happens that way, though." He slouched back into the room, slumped at the table, idly pushed the laptop screen down, then up. "Seasons change. Happens fast."

"Shit." Dean slumped too, on the edge of his bed.

"Might be Indian Summer, maybe. Few weeks."

Dean grinned. "Remember that year in Athens it was, like, eighty-five for two, three weeks?"

"I thought I was going to _die_, man, I was ready for the rain to come back. And snow. Anything but that sky just, y'know, _burning_. Going on forever."

Dean let his gaze drift away. He listened to the sound of typing, Sam browsing local news sites. Said, "Breakfast, right?"

His brother made a dismissing noise, waving a hand vaguely at him, or the door, or the table lamp. Dean glanced back, saw him hunched over, engrossed, and with a slight eyeroll he grabbed his wallet, paused to think before shrugging on an extra layer under his jacket, and swung wide the door. Light like the end of days blazed over his skin. Cold, brilliant.

"Coffee," his brother called after him as he stepped into the wind. "Coffee!"

Coffee, and cheap breakfast from a local fast-food joint. Sausage and biscuits and cheese. Poor Sam, no fruit or vegetables, unless allowed parts per million of fungus could be considered a vegetable. He stopped outside the motel to breathe the air, and realized he'd changed his mind. Cold, but not creeping and damp, not insidious, like the previous night. Crackling and sharp and bright, all needles and ice. But clear. Fresh.

"Yeah," he said, slamming the door wide and startling his brother into jerking his fingers off the keys, making one of his little noises. "It's gonna snow." Took in Sam's slightly trembling hands. "…sorry," he offered, belatedly, softly.

"Breakfast?" his brother fixed woeful eyes on the white paper sack and Dean tossed it at him, flinching when he fumbled it with slightly trembling fingers, added another _sorry_, and crossed to place Sam's coffee—sadly lacking anything vaguely vanilla- or milk-like—carefully beside the laptop.

His brother wasn't fastidious, but Sam made an effort at least to keep crumbs out of his precious laptop's keyboard, shooing Dean away whenever he veered too close in his pace-and-eat breakfast routine. When Dean had choked down the last of dry, badly-made biscuit with a hard swallow of bitter black coffee, his brother deigned to allow him within viewing range, and he leaned close over Sam's shoulder, peering at the screen.

"We missed it, first go-round," Sam said, jabbing a finger at the screen, "See? Because it was three years ago, and there weren't really any red flags, and nothing to do with the angel cemetery."

"'Missing children'…but they turned up?" He squinted at the screen, then crowded closer, Sam shifting sideways as Dean pushed up toward the table, one hand resting on the back of the chair, other grasping the edge of the table. Sam's shoulder dug into his chest. "Turned up…four days later. Eckers' farm?"

"Near cemetery road. Scalp Level."

"Three kids…" he chewed his lower lip. "Same kids we saw? Because that…was weird."

"I'd say so—but more than usual?"

"Well…some, yeah. A little more than usual. Nothing dramatic. Just…weird."

Sam nodded, beat a rapid rhythm on the table with three fingers.

"Okay, let me look around a little more. You could go check out the site, see if there's anything going, any sign." Dean pushed upright and Sam rolled his shoulders, forward and back.

Dean said, "You staying here all day?"

Sam looked up. "You want me to come too?"

"No, no I just mean—"

Sam waved a hand. "You go. Just scout. Check in and I'll maybe have more info for you in a little bit."

"Missing kids and weird sightings." Dean swirled the dregs of his coffee around, then swallowed them in one gulp, grimacing. "Might not be worth stickin' around for."

"We'll see."

* * *

At the farm, the grass was flattened in swirls and whorls by the rain, and the air was full of the smell of rot, overlain with the burn of frost. _Incoming_, Dean thought grimly, as he swept the EMF meter around the area, as it squealed and spat nastily at him.

Ghosts? Or something else?

He sat on the hood of the car across from the fences where he'd seen the kids last night, one boot tucked up against the fender, meter in his pocket switched off. He wanted more coffee. More caffeine, because he was sure he had grave dirt lodged under his eyelids. When his phone vibrated, he swept it out and clapped it to his ear, plastic warm against his skin.

"Well?"

_"It's me. Find anything?"_

"EMF, definitely. Something…wrong out here. Or an echo, maybe."

_"You want to try talking to the people at the house?"_

He shut his eyes, and resisted the urge to curse.

"Not really."

Sam huffed a faint breath through his nose. Dean already knew he was out of options.

_"You going to do it anyway?"_

He sighed, slumping, though Sam couldn't see him.

"…yeah."

Sam made a noncommittal little noise.

Dean hung up, and regarded the cold, damp landscape. The sky was crawling grey and white.

"_Shit_," he muttered.

* * *

Sam came to meet him in the parking lot, expression flat, pushing into the passenger's seat before Dean even opened his own door.

"What—Sam!"

"Drive, Dean," his brother's voice was low. "Just—drive."

Dean squinted at him as he sat staring out the window, throat working, swallowing hard. Watched him squeeze his eyes shut, once, then open them wide without a sound.

He shoved the car into gear almost violently, but eased out of the lot as gently as he could. Sam's left hand scrabbled lightly at the seat, though Dean doubted his brother was even aware of the motion.

They drove for a while, until Sam settled. By the time Dean pulled into a public park, tiny flakes had begun to drift from the sky. Small, and far apart, like the first stars at twilight. Sam climbed out and went to sit on the hood, hands tucked up under his arms. When Dean cut the engine, the silence filled every space.

He went to sit by his brother. The suspension creaked as he sank onto the hood, and the engine ticked quietly behind them, warm and content. They watched the snow fall for a while. In the distance, children in bright coats shouted, squealed, laughed. Dean smiled a little, and twisted the ring on his finger.

Sam swallowed, gulped a little. Dean stiffened, then forced himself to relax.

"It's…strange, Dean," Sam began, but silence seemed to overtake him again, and when Dean glanced over his brother was staring into the middle distance, gaze slightly blank. He resisted the urge to jostle the younger man. They didn't need the added complication.

At last Sam drew a breath, pulling into himself from wherever he'd gone. Said, "The kids, right? The ones we saw?"

"Mm." Neutral, even-toned.

"Okay." Sam gestured, drawing shapes in the air. "The kids were reported missing from the house, from their beds. Three of them—Beth, Sarah and Leo. Eckers."

"So they belong to the farm," Dean blurted, before he could remind himself to shut up. Sam stirred, but settled, and sank his weight more deeply against the car.

"They do. Did. Disappeared and showed up again three days later. They…ran off, parents said. Kids acting out, or whatever. But I dug a little harder, found—found some other things. Kids dropped out of school, after they came back. Went to stay with their grandparents."

Dean's mouth stretched, showing teeth. "Who conveniently live far, far away."

A faint, unhappy smile ghosted over Sam's face. "Tuscaloosa."

_"Damn."_

"But." And here Sam's voice took on that tone of careful stillness. "But that's not all I found."

Dean didn't say anything. Didn't even look at the man.

"There weren't any pictures. But someone talked about—in the report, the investigation, there were mentions of…hands. Bruises on hands. Blood under nails. Like that. You know."

Dean was pretty sure he did. But he held himself still, and waited.

"It was something ugly. Something happened…and whatever's left over, it wanted us to know. Wanted…_someone_…to know. Maybe not just us. I don't know. But I couldn't find anything about—weird sightings, anything like that. No one else, afterward. Nothing more."

Dean gave a slow, thoughtful nod.

"Are there lives in danger here, Sam?" And he did look over this time, met his gaze, raised his eyebrows. Sometimes it was easy to get distracted, off-mission. They couldn't afford it.

"Something went on," Sam said firmly, after a short, careful pause. "Because there's no records in the Tuscaloosa school system, or nearby systems, for those kids. And the grandparents passed away over a year ago. And what we saw was _wrong._ The parents are still living there—"

"Sure, I talked to one of 'em. A woman."

"The mother. Still living there. But…maybe not for long?"

"It's a pretty big 'maybe,' to jump into something all of a sudden."

Sam nodded, fidgeted with his hands, fingers of one running stiffly over the palm of the other. "I think we pretty much deal in 'maybes,' though. And this is worth at least a second pass. Maybe nothing'll come of it. Maybe it was a death echo, or some kind of spiritual feedback."

"All right." Dean stood, brushed away the scattering of flakes that had collected on his thighs. "A second look couldn't hurt. But if nothing else comes of it, we leave town tonight."

A nod from his brother.

"Okay. Yeah."

* * *

They prowled around the outskirts of the farm, going carefully through tangled grasses, bracken and thorns. The treeline rattled at them from a distance, and the occasional strong gust peeled dry leaves away from branches like fingernails, or pieces of dead skin. Sam got caught, once, tangled in thick brambles, and Dean cackled as his brother flailed, then went to help him, fabric and skin pulling free as Sam hissed soft curses.

"Gently," cautioned Dean, "Gently."

After that, they went a little more carefully, but Dean unequivocally vetoed Sam going back for his kukri, hardheartedly ignoring Sam's pout.

"They're _torn_, Dean, look," he whined, bloody fingers pawing at the brand-new holes in his jeans, leaving rusty smears in the denim. Dean's lip curled.

"So watch where you're sticking your giant damn feet from now on and you'll be fine. Y'idiot." He paused. "And no machete, either."

Sam wiped his fingers on his jeans again, muttering. He trailed his brother as he stomped up a small hillock, a fist of tight earth and coarse, flattened grass, and they stood together under a honey locust tree, considering the distant house.

"A woman?" Sam asked, and Dean grunted, fingers tapping his thighs.

"Didn't have much to say," he said finally, under the weight of Sam's gaze. "Just that her husband would be home soon, and she needed to feed the cats. I must be giving off some kind of _vibe_ these days, man. Swear to God."

"It's almost definitely something to do with the house, or something in it. The kids vanished from there—didn't show up for school, an administrator reported it. And when we saw them last night, the house was directly in our line of sight, right behind them. We need to get inside."

Dean squinted into the distance. "Okay. Why don't we head back, stake the place out. Wait 'til they leave for a couple hours…"

"That's an awful long time to wait. And I think the kids were trying to tell us something. Or tell someone, anyway. I'm not sure this is something we should dawdle on. Not if we want to _know_."

Dean heaved a put-upon sigh. "Look, can we just—not do it that way? Sam?"

His brother spread his hands, gave a little shrug. "It's not my fault you didn't get anything out of her when you had the chance."

"Shit." He rubbed his forehead above the bridge of his nose. "Fine."

"Good." A hand patted his shoulder. "Trust me, Dean. It'll go a lot faster this way."

Dean rolled his shoulders, shot his brother one last, lopsided look, and set off again for the farmhouse, Sam loping along behind him.

* * *

He regarded the woman thoughtfully. Behind him, he could hear Sam moving around noisily, soft thuds and rustlings, punctuated by an occasional crack of wood meeting wood.

"Mrs. Eckers?" He wondered aloud, and Sam grunted.

"Probably."

His fingers hovered over the bruise on the side of her head, but he did not touch, mindful of his brother.

"You're definitely getting more precise," he murmured.

The smack-crash noises from Sam's vicinity ceased suddenly, and he looked back over his shoulder just in time to catch his brother giving him the hairy eyeball.

"Are you gonna help me out here _at all_?" the taller man demanded, yanking a handful of stationary and unpaid bills from a desk drawer and waving them violently in Dean's direction, "Or were you just going to spend some quality time with your new girlfriend while I do all the work?"

He straightened, lips pursed, and waved a hand dismissively at Sam. "All _right_, Jesus, keep your panties unbunched. Your shirt on. Whatever. I'll check the kitchen, and then we can do the upstairs. Does that sound fair enough to you, your royal pissiness?"

"Fine, whatever," Sam grumped, flipping rapidly through the envelopes, making a great show of ignoring Dean now that he'd gotten what he wanted. Dean scowled and stomped into the kitchen, but found that the EMF meter was apparently as sullen as his brother, and about as communicative. He popped a few drawers half-heartedly and riffled through a collection of cookbooks, but all that got him was a paper cut.

"_Shit,"_ he hissed, catching his ring finger in his mouth, wincing at the sting. He straightened, letting the cookbooks spill out chaotically over the counter, and looked around the twilit room. Nothing. Exactly nothing. Shadows smeared over every surface, and in the distance he could hear the wind. Slowly, his lips drew back from his teeth as he registered the stillness in this place; a pool of it in which the house rested like a stone at the bottom of a lake. Far away was the wind, and nearby, the sound of his brother tearing through the private property of two total strangers. And then, under that—

He paused, closed both hands around the EMF meter, and clicked it off.

Under that what?

He shut his eyes and stilled, his breathing light, slow and shallow. Lips parted slightly in anticipation. The sound was just there, at the edge of everything.

In the other room, Sam had quit moving as well, noise going suddenly dead. The silence closed in, wrapping around him, soft and taut. Dean could feel the cold of the season, the shadows on his skin. The weight of it. And the wind, the trees. The murmur of the furnace in the belly of the house. The faint whine of the refrigerator. The noise of his own breath. Footsteps crunching through the grass…

His eyes opened. _There_, and he knew Sam had heard it as well because he caught the sound of his brother sucking air through his teeth. Slipping up by the door, Dean peered through the gauzy curtain and caught the shadow, the figure of a man approaching. A moment later he registered the clomp of heavy boots, first on the steps, then on the back porch.

The jingle of keys.

A man. A living man. Pretty much outside their jurisdiction, then.

He felt his shoulders relax slightly, and released a breath, eyes flickering down as the tumblers dropped in the lock and the doorknob turned. A short breath, sharp inhalation, and he plastered on the brightest smile he had.

"Hi!" He chirped when the door swung open, and the man froze, muscles locking up, eyes widening and face flushing, mouth snapping open.

"What—"

"Hi, yeah so, you're probably wondering who the hell I am," Dean continued in his best cheerfully oblivious voice, both hands raised, palms out, fingers loose, backing up slowly as the man pushed into the kitchen. "You're probably a little upset—"

"Where's Helena? Where's—"

"Your wife? Is that her name? She's okay—yeah, no actually she's fine, she's in the other room waiting for you—" obviously he wasn't doing all that well getting the guy to calm down, and Dean reflected woefully that, once again, the problem was probably with him. Or maybe just with his being in another man's house going through his stuff. Tough to say for sure.

"Who—" The man was stuttering, face red, tendons standing out in his neck. Choking on his own fury, his fear. "_Who the hell are you?_" The words barked through stiff, nearly white lips.

"Me? I'm Dean." He tried again for a disarming smile, wasn't sure how well he managed it. "Just stopping by for a visit." He paused.

"And this here's my brother Sam."

Dean winced a little as the side of a large fist hammered down sharply on the man's temple. He went down hard, but Sam caught him in one arm and lowered him to the floor.

"You shouldn't have told him our names," Sam said distractedly as he knelt to check the pulse point, then stood, heading for the stairs. Dean followed, flipping the meter on again.

"You're the one who told me 'hands off,' Sam. I had to say _something_ to keep him busy. Did you expect me to maybe burst into song instead?"

Sam stopped halfway up the stairs, turning to wrinkle his nose in an expression of mingled disbelief and amusement. This time, Dean was sure he got the "disarming" part of the smile just right.

They split up at the top of the stairs, and Dean made quick work of the bathroom and what might have once been a bedroom, now packed with boxes and choking in dust. He found old clothes, toys, books, and stacks and stacks of papers. Report cards, schoolwork, sheet music, old drawings in thick crayon. He left everything scattered across the floor. There was nothing even slightly out of the ordinary, nothing to cause so much as a raised eyebrow.

He paced the length of the hall, running his fingers absently along the smooth painted surface of the wall. It was cool to the touch, but not unusually so. He found Sam in the last room, what was probably the master bedroom. He had the contents of a small bookshelf and a set of storage containers, dragged from under the bed, strewn across the floor, and he was sorting through the mess in a halfhearted manner. On a dresser, jewelry winked in the overhead light; real or artificial, Dean couldn't tell and didn't much care.

His brother caught his eye and gave a little half-shrug. "Nothing?"

"Buncha boxes and shit. Dust. Like you wouldn't believe. Kids've been gone a long time." Dean paused. "Real long time."

Sam heaved a sigh and swept a hand vaguely through a collection of old keys and buttons, then rested his chin in his palm to peer up at Dean. "It's not in the house."

"Then we've got two unconscious people downstairs who're gonna be gettin' _real_ friendly with the cops pretty soon, and not a damn thing to show for it."

Sam's smile was humorless as he got to his feet, an extended process of unfolding that seemed to go on forever. Dean got bored about halfway through and wandered off to the window, folding his arms and peering out into the thickening twilight, the thousand shades of grey. His brother announced his presence at his back not through any gentle nudge or unobtrusive clearing of the throat, but by grabbing Dean's arm in a sudden, vice-like grip and hissing air through his teeth.

"What the—hands, man!"

"Dean," Sam breathed, "Look at—look. Look at the barn."

He glanced at the building in question, a faded brownish structure about seventy-five yards distant. In the falling dark it was difficult to make out any details, but he did pick out smudges of bright color high on the wall, out of place amid the general drabness. Dean shrugged.

"S'just a hex sign. So what?"

But beside him Sam was shaking his head. He'd unclasped his fingers from their death grip on Dean's arm and ran them both through his hair. "That's not like any hex sign I've ever seen."

Dean squinted back through the dusk, but it was too dark to pick out much detail. He'd trust his brother's younger eyes, though, on something like this.

"Then we'd better hurry. Just past sunset, now."

They clattered down the stairs and Sam stepped carefully over the prone body of probably-Eckers, Dean skirting the island with its fallen cookbooks, pushing drawers of knives and utensils half-closed as he passed. The door banged open and they didn't bother pulling it closed as they stepped into the sudden cold.

"No stars tonight," Sam observed. Dean glanced up at the heavy grey sky, eerily luminous above the darkness on the ground. The earlier dusting of snow had long since faded, but the frost had a grip on the land, now, and their boots crunched heavily through the thick frozen grasses as they cut across the patch of lawn away from the house and toward the barn.

There were no lights. Every breath cooled Dean's body and behind him the house faded to a ghost presence, a memory of civilization. In the vast, wild distance he barely made out the shapes of trees, black on grey, and the line of the horizon, the edge of the world. The barn loomed in the corner of his eye, indistinct and still. Huge.

They didn't run, because going ass-over-teakettle in the dark on unfamiliar terrain was a great way to bring a hunt to an abrupt, uncomfortable end. They moved swiftly, though, as much as possible without flashlights or the moon or even starlight—nothing but the reflected light of the clouds and the faint limning of low rises and dips in the landscape keeping them steady and upright. Dean tripped over hidden rocks and an unseen bottle nearly sent Sam tumbling. The summer night noises were gone, long gone, and the silence of fall curled in Dean's chest and settled heavy on his body.

"This kind of night…" Sam said, and Dean grunted.

"The world is thin."

Dean resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Trust Sam to state the blindingly obvious.

He caught the scent of it before they reached the barn: a reek of decay and animal shit, and Dean thought he heard the noise of dragging metal, a low trembling whine, almost below the level of hearing. His lips parted slightly in sympathy at the sound; grating, and full of hunger.

"Something inside?" Sam murmured, running a hand over the rough wood of the barn, the sound dry and scratchy. His other hand hovered in Dean's general vicinity, fingers splayed wide, keeping him at bay. "Animal, maybe?"

"Stinks like it," Dean's voice came out a low rasp, eyes tracking his brother's other hand, pale on the dark wood. "Nothing weird about that."

Sam dropped both hands and stepped back, into Dean's space, nearly bumping his chest, but his gaze was turned upward, along the high wall toward the sign now swallowed by the dark.

"We should go in."

Dean pulled his weapon at that, the pistol heavy, warm from body heat. He exhaled a little. Sam drew the long knife from his boot and held it in a loose, right-handed grip. Dean didn't let his brother have firearms when there were people around.

"All right." Sam laid a hand on the small side door and looked back, licked his lips, and in one smooth motion opened it and stepped inside. Dean followed quickly, covering his brother's huge form as they crept in. His eyes strained wide in the liquid black, all shadows on shadows. So dark it _hurt._

He opened his mouth and turned his head toward his brother's shadow, and he heard the chain moving somewhere close by. And in the space where his brother should have been was a cold and sudden gap.

His breath stopped. The world…_stopped_.

"Sam?" he whispered, and "Sam?"

_Sam?_

He stepped forward, reaching into the gap, grasping at the chill. A noise started up somewhere, that same groaning, tremulous sound, leaking out through clenched teeth. Dean's hand barely showed in the dark but he felt it slide through the air, closing spasmodically, grasping hold of nothing. He shut his eyes and choked at a phantom sensation—his brother's jacket, his coat, the rough material under his fingers, the warmth of life…

Nothing. Nothing. His throat was trying to crawl up out of his mouth. His shuddered, filmed over with sickness. _Sam?_ He stepped forward further. He could _smell _where his brother had been, just there, the odor faint but familiar beneath all the stench in the barn. Human sweat and denim and salt. He couldn't swallow. His hands spasmed on the pistol's grip, and there was a new sound. Beneath his breath, on the side of it. Away, somewhere. Far away, hollow and thin. An animal noise from a human throat, forced out in terror, high and breathy. Coming in closer. Coming on strong.

Everything contracted around that sound. The whole world narrowed to that point. His throat worked; saliva pooled in his mouth.

"Sam?"

It came again. His brother's voice. His little brother. Thin hurt noises. He shut his eyes, felt the shiver start in his spine and work its way out to the tips of his fingers, whole body shaking with one deep, violent tremor. He stumbled back, back toward the door, banged up against a wall, and nearby metal clanked and he smelled rust, and wet, and his fingers scrabbled at the rough wood. He turned around completely, and couldn't find the door.

"Sam!"

His brother was close, he was just on the other side of the wall. Dean could _hear_ him, and he remembered this, remembered how this went. Just the other side, on the other side. The sounds just carried, could go for miles, the keening pushed out high and sick and scared, thready and punctuated by sharp, betrayed cries, cutting and loud. But the door—there was no door. Just a wall, just a space, just splinters and dry rot, just the noise in his ears the noise in his ears _screaming_ in his ears piercing _Sam Sam no Sammy no_

His hand slammed against the wall. Dust cascaded down. Sam made a new sound, a cry thick and wet, tears or something else. And then he was scrabbling over the floor, trying to crawl, trying so hard—Dean hit the wall again, again again, slamming bodily against it and he knew he was screaming, felt the sounds tear out of him but he couldn't _hear_ it, all he heard was Sam, wordless, Sam, choking on something viscous.

"Sam! Sam please Sam Sammy please leave him alone leavehimalone! Please whatever it was don't hurt him, don't hurt him _Sammy! _Please _God_ please don't Sam _Sam Sammy oh God—_" _pleasegod pleaseplease don'thurthim don't hurt him Sam Sam ohgodplease oh god not him_

He slammed against the wall again. The whole thing shook and on the other side Sam was crying, softly, long drawn-out noises against the floor, the ground, the earth, the—tile and carpet and soft summer grasses _no, no_—Dean slammed against the wall again, and behind him an animal dragged its chain, made that noise, that grating, scraping whine and Dean spun with a snarl, lips drawn back on another scream and he brought up his weapon and found its eyes in the dark and _squeezed_ and there was a flash and roar and the thunk of impacting flesh and a startled cut-off yelp and the thud of a falling body no more noise and _Sam_

He spun to the wall, flung himself at the wall and his hand slapped suddenly against cold, bitter cold, and hard. Iron. A handle, a door, and he flung it wide and stumbled out under the luminous terrible sky and screamed and screamed his brother's name into the dark, rushing away from him, tearing away into the night.

* * *

He knew the man's name. He _knew_, some part in the back of his mind remembered, gibbered at him _no touching Dean no touching _as he dragged him by the hair into the living room where his wife cowered, and flung him bodily across the coffee table. There was no sound, no satisfying crack of bone at the impact, and he dropped to one knee beside the man and grabbed his head again and slammed it against the table, and again, until he heard the crack. Until he made a noise at the pain.

The woman was shuddering, stretching out pleading hands. His head snapped up and he grabbed one slender wrist and yanked her forward, forced the other hand through the hair at the back of her skull and shook and shook her.

"Where are they?" The words came from that same place at the back of his mind, choked out through saliva, pushed past the noise of his brother, _still_ his brother, the neverending desperation of his cries. _sammysammysamsammy _

"Nnuhh-no please—"

He shook her again, so hard. "You _sent them somewhere. Sent them—_" almost choked, "Sent them _away._ Away _where did you send them?_" Tears ran from her eyes and he let go of her arm and hit her across the face, once and then again, hand curling, and he clawed at her cheek, under her eye. Grit his teeth to keep from screaming.

"Where_. Are. They _wherethe_ hell _ismy_ brother? _Where is he?_ Where is he?_"

She blubbered with fear, and pain, pleaded with him incoherently, body shuddering, He rested his palms on either side of her face, curled his fingers gently around her skull. Drew her in close.

"You _tell_ me," he breathed.

One hand pawed ineffectually at his ribs, the other wavered in the air, grasping loosely at empty space. He tracked its movement as it wavered near his shoulder, then watched it swing wide, fingers clenching and opening, in the direction of—

He jerked his hands from her head, ignored her shuddering gasp, and plunged across the room to the open cabinet where Sam had stood less than an hour ago. Tore through the mess, hands clumsy and shaking with the noise, with trying not to throw up at the noise, Sam's noise. Knick-knacks and dust and bills and stamps, tape and scissors, a deck of cards, half a ball of twine…

He made a sound when his fingers closed on something small and smooth and cold, hard as bone. He heard it squeeze out of his throat, desolate and hungry, ugly. Beneath a pile of books his fingers clutched at a box, a handful of inches of wood, smaller than the jewelry box he'd seen upstairs. His fingers left long streaks in the dust on its surface as he drew it out.

It was shut tight with a tiny lock, as delicate as the skull of a bird, pale and awful. His gaze skittered over the signed daubed in garish colors the lid—not a hex sign. Never had been a hex sign.

He didn't care what it meant.

He dropped to his knees and slammed the box against the floor, once, and again, and once more, until the lock shattered, and the hinges, and the lid split away from the bottom and dropped from his fingers and fell open.

In the sudden, absolute silence, Dean reached out and gathered up the broken pieces. Even the crying woman—Eckers? Mrs. Eckers?—was silent. And he _couldn'thearSam_. Could barely hear himself breathe. The world was huge, and silent. There was a body on the floor.

He dropped the box and scrambled backwards, gasping aloud. But when he drew a breath and looked again he saw that it wasn't a body. Was a pile of bones, a miserable little pile of yellowed bones, and a few scraps of skin, dry and leathery, and a bit of cloth, faded almost to grey.

There were three piles of bones directly in front of him. Skulls. Little skulls.

"Oh," he whispered, and looked up.

"No," the woman gasped, eyes widening, trying to scramble back and cover her husband's body at the same time, "Nnno no no _no ohgod pleahh ahhh_—" spiraled up into a scream, covering her head with her arms, flinching away as he scrambled through the bones and grabbed at her leg, grasped one slender ankle and yanked her back and hammered her in the face, already a mess of bruising. Blood ran from her lip, her mouth. He hauled his arm back and made a fist and it was all _where's Sam _and _where's my brother_ _where is he I can't hear him I can't hear him anymore_

Sam!

But something got in the way. In between his fist and the woman. Some warmth, some fire, some strength of bone and sinew, tendon and muscle. Power and fierceness holding him back, clutching at his arm, his shoulder, digging into nerve clusters, yanking him backward, and his legs kicked wildly and bones scattered across the carpet and he choked on rage, on fury, on the scream that made it out of his throat, wet and phlegmy. Where was Sam? _Where was Sam?_

"Dean! Dean _stop_, you have to stop!"

It went through his head.

Clean through his skull, from one side to the other, clear and piercing, bright and hollow. A pain so clear his knees buckled, a light so bright, so hollow, so empty. His spine hit the floor. His eyes opened wide. Everything opened up—huge, vast. The enormity of the sky. The desert at noon.

Clear, and empty. Hollow. Without fire. Without. A hand rested on his forehead cool and clean_ oh_ and a little noise, a tiny noise, a Sam-noise vibrated on his lower lip like a bead of water, humming in the sunlight, just after the rain. He shuddered all over, clutched at the hands, scrambled around and grabbed his brother's shirt and buried his face where the arm joined the chest, just below the shoulder. Every sound a benediction. All his words had abandoned him. He'd never had any words. Never had anything but the silence. The bright clear emptiness, the place where his brother was safe.

"Shh, hey, 's'gonna be okay, everything's fine, I'm fine. Dean. Nothing hurt me. I promise, I'm fine." Soft. And soft. Long fingers curving on his skull. Vibrations through ribs and lungs and sheathes of muscle. Lullaby and pieces. All the pieces of a person. Little Sammy.

In pieces.

He choked out noises, brutal and dry, squeezed his eyes and his teeth. Pushed everything back. All of it, back. Sam waited, let him, waited as he gasped in the emptiness, sucked in lungfuls of hollow air. Let it flood across the black, soften the squeezing in his head, the fire in his joints. Nothing. Nothing. No, nothing.

Never was, never had been.

He drew one more shuddering gasp and sat back on his heels, letting Sam's arms slip away, pushing his own hand over his eyes. Cold prickled all over his skin, once, in a wave, and he shivered with it, and rubbed at the back of his neck.

"Okay?" Sam asked.

Dean nodded. "Yeah." Cold and bright. His head was empty. He stood up and the world pulled away, briefly. He spared a glance for the Eckers, the woman still crying, making thin little noises. Looked at his brother, knew Sam was ready to step between them if Dean made a move in her direction.

"No touching," Dean said, letting his features warp into a smile. Sam shrugged.

"Come on," he said, digging in his pockets, pulling out the matches. "We've got something to take care of."

* * *

"So it's magic." Dean rubbed at the back of his neck, at the cold flatness there. "Black magic?"

"Well, I—I don't actually know. But I don't think it's just magic. I think it's—I mean I didn't get a good look at the sign. But it seems…older. Than even the old magic we've seen before."

"Witchcraft?" He thought back to the cemetery, and the light on the angels. But this was something else.

"No. I think…older. Bad, and dark. Like…to make something, witchcraft takes what's already there, the power in the world. It's just a—a mechanism, it's just engines and tools for using something that already exists. This is like," he bit his lip, looked at the light of the burning barn. "This is what you need first, before you can do magic."

"It's like…" Dean hesitated. He didn't want to be the one to say it.

"It's the place where the world is thin."

They'd thrown the box into the fire, and the bird-skull-latch. Sam had taken a moment to copy down the sign, and that was all. They were well back from the inferno, now, and a light snow had begun to fall, but the air tasted wet. It would turn to thicker snow shortly.

Dean shifted a little, from foot to foot. "I guess we have to call the police," he said.

"Yeah, I guess we do."

Dean paused, and added, "You know, your knife was in there."

Sam didn't say anything. Didn't even move.

Dean looked down, at the snow on the tops of his boots. Said, softly, "Sam?"

"Mmm?"

His voice was far away. They both were, really. Far away. "Why did it take you, and not me?"

And then Sam was there, though Dean didn't look up to see it. Only he felt his eyes. Flinched away a little.

"Dean," he said, "Dean. It got both of us."

He stood there, in the cold and falling snow, for several long moments. Finally Sam stirred, and made a light little spidery gesture in the air. "Did you drop your gun at the house, when you went back looking for me?"

Dean looked up at his brother, and nodded.

"I didn't—I mean—"

But Sam just shrugged, already turning, already heading back. He gestured vaguely, and Dean hurried to catch up.

"Okay," Sam said. "That's fine. Pick up your weapon, and let's go."

-end

* * *

Other notes:

The main goal here was to explore one possible way actually having a fairly nasty set of early experiences would change the people we know into something else. It was nice to have all the supernatural stuff to work with, since that makes writing this sort of story a lot of fun, and gives me more to work with.

The bit about nerve clusters is s shoutout to 5x11, when Martin jams his fingers right into the cluster at the join of Sam's arm and chest. Pretty painful, and effective.

I wrote most of this weeks ago, before I started _At Bay_. This was supposed to be the only spn fic I ever did. So now there are two…


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